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Charlie Crist will be listed ninth (i.e, last) on the November 2008 ballot for the U.S. Senate race in Florida. See this CNN story. Florida lists the nominee of the party that won the governorship first. It lists any other party that has registration of 5% of the voters next. It lists the nominees of other parties next. Finally, at the bottom, are the independent candidates, listed in the order in which they filed. Besides Crist, four other independent candidates filed.

Of course, Crist or any other candidate is free to sue over the ballot order. In 2007 the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the all candidates must have an equal opportunity for the first line on the ballot. Other courts that have made similar decisions are the California Supreme Court, and the 8th circuit, and U.S. District Court decisions in Oklahoma and New Mexico.

No Responses

One more chance for the FL election MORONS to screw up as in 2000 — NO definition of a LEGAL vote >>> Bush v. Gore >>> U.S.A. HAVA law (requiring the MORONS in the States to have such a legal definition).

The New Hampshire decision was in 2006. It was based on provisions of the New Hampshire constitution, but noted that similar decisions had been made in other states based on the 14th Amendment equal protection provisions.

New Hampshire has some large multi-member legislative districts (up to 13 members). So if you were 13th in the list of candidates for your party you might be at a big disadvantage when voters started picking through the lists.

The decision in New Hampshire applied to both the column order for the parties, and the candidate order within parties.

In 2008, the column order for Republican, Democrat, and Other were randomly selected based on the 24 senate districts. It looks pretty odd to have the Others column first because it had three presidential candidates: Nader, Phillies, and Barr. I don’t know if there was any variation in the order of those three.

There was a particular curiosity with respect to the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. New Hampshire law provides for ballot rotation in primary elections – and the New Hampshire Supreme Court made note of that in their decision. That New Hampshire already had taken into account the issue in certain elections would mean that it wouldn’t be a particular problem in other elections.

But in 2008 the primary ballot was in fixed order, which meant Clinton was towards the top, and Obama was near the bottom. There were some statistical studies that suggested that this cost Obama the election, and was contrary to polling before the primary.

Richard is correct. NPA candidates are listed in the order in which they filed. In Florida’s 2006 U.S. Senate race, for example, Belinda Noah was listed before Brian Moore. She had filed a day earlier than Moore.

In the state’s gubernatorial contest that year, NPA hopefuls Richard Dembinsky and John Wayne Smith were listed on the ballot ahead of Karl C.C. Behm, the third NPA candidate.

In the MN 7th Congressional district a former Democratic state lawmaker is running as an Independent. I think he was very pro-life, back in the 1990s when he served in St. Paul. It is a very [too much for my taste] conservative district, with a conservative Democrat incumbent and its pretty rare for independents or minor parties to be too active in this part of the state.